On the barren tip of a Pacific island, Federico Mndez Snchez watches with affection as two hulking grey-and-white albatrosses stretch their necks and bob their heads in an elaborate courtship dance.
You can see how they put their beaks up, and then under the wing, and they do it in synchrony, explains Sanchez, the director of a Mexican conservation group working to protect the birds. The better they match, the more probability they have to mate together and remain together for life.
Laysan albatrosses are thriving again on Guadalupe Island, a slab of volcanic rock about 240 kilometres off the western coast of Mexico. It is one of almost 100 Mexican islands where both people and wildlife are gaining from an initiative to restore their battered ecosystems.
The initiative has prioritized the eradication of invasive alien species the primary driver of losses and extinctions among the unique flora and fauna that evolved on isolated islands before giving a helping hand to species ranging from the majestic albatrosses to little-known endemic plants to stage a comeback.
The United Nations has named the initiative, which has been running for a quarter-century and posted impressive results, among its World Restoration Flagships sites across the world honoured by the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration for exemplary large-scale and long-term ecosystem restoration. The accolade is part of a global effort to nurse nature back to health and make land- and seascapes everywhere more resilient to climate change.
Islands are treasure troves of biodiversity that are unfortunately very vulnerable to outside influences, said Natalia Alekseeva of the UN Environment Programme, who coordinates the UN Decade. Mexicos success in removing invasive alien species so nature can rebound shows what can be achieved with cooperation, resources and patience.
Decades-long effort
Mexicos more than 1,300 islands and the surrounding waters provide nesting and foraging sites for nearly one-third of the worlds seabird species, including multiple types of cormorant, petrel and auk as well as many birds on their twice-yearly migrations.
However, the islands have long suffered from the impacts of introduced mammals like cats and rats, which prey on native wildlife, as well as goats and rabbits, which over-graze the vegetation. Pollution including marine debris and climate change impacts like rising sea levels have added to the pressure on both terrestrial and aquatic island wildlife.
In response, Mexicos National Commission for Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) and the civil society organization Grupo de Ecologa y Conservacin de Islas (GECI) developed an ambitious and comprehensive restoration programme, in collaboration with partners from government agencies, civil society, academia and local communities.
So far, the initiative has restored about 60,000 hectares, including by removing 60 populations of 13 different invasive alien species from 39 islands. As a result, 23 of the 27 seabird colonies lost from islands off the Baja California peninsula have returned, such as royal terns on San Roque Island and Cassins auklets on eight island groups.
On some islands, whole landscapes have been restored, whether by letting nature regenerate at its own pace or by cultivating and planting native and endemic tree and plant species to speed the process. Biosecurity protocols with measures such as setting traps at ports and inspecting vessels and their cargo have been established to prevent harmful species from returning, and many of the islands are now part of official protected areas.
By the end of the UN Decade in 2030, the goal is to complete the restoration of a total of 100,000 hectares, encompassing almost 100 islands and protecting more than 300 endemic species of mammals, birds, reptiles and plants a tangible return on the total investment of about USD 25 million.
The initiative has designed and implemented its activities in collaboration with people living on the islands and invested in educational and cultural programmes, such as locally produced plays and murals celebrating the islands and their biodiversity.
Moreover, island communities are benefitting from more resilient ecosystems that protect them against extreme weather events such as native forests that prevent landslides during rainstorms and provide stable livelihoods from fishing and ecotourism.
A remote challenge
On Guadalupe Island, the initiative has overcome huge logistical and scientific challenges.
Inhabited only by the staff of a small Mexican naval base and a seasonal fishing community, the island has no paved roads and few sources of freshwater. Food and supplies arrive infrequently on navy ships from the mainland. Scientists stay for a month or more at a time at the rudimentary biological station.
A first priority was removing about 10,000 feral goats descended from animals brought by whalers and seal hunters in the 17th and 18th centuries as a source of food. According to Alfonse Aguirre Munoz, former executive director of GECI and now a strategic advisor, the goats had grazed the island bare.
It looked like Mars, he said. It was just stones, almost no soil. And almost all the trees were gone.
With the goats gone, the project established a nursery to accelerate the recovery of the islands vegetation. More than a quarter of a million plants, including seedlings of endemic varieties of cypress and pine, have been planted across the island, helping triple the forest area to more than 900 hectares. Elsewhere, coastal scrub has steadily displaced invasive grasses.
A second focus was removing feral cats that had decimated the islands bird populations, with one seabird the Guadalupe storm-petrel among six endemic breeding species and sub-speciesfeared driven to extinction. With the cats numbers sharply reduced, the population of Laysan albatrosses has grown spectacularly, from 143 pairs in 2013 to about 1,700 pairs in 2024. Scientific studies also indicate benefits to human health, as feral cats can transmit diseases to surrounding communities.
The magic of island restoration is that, over a single human lifetime, you can really see the change, said Sanchez, the current GECI executive director, who has been working on the initiative for decades.
Now the scientists are trying to establish a new nesting colony of another albatross species the black-footed albatross at the same site using eggs and chicks collected in Hawaii, where its low-lying breeding sites are at risk from rising sea levels.
Since 2021, the programme has brought 127 eggs or chicks to Guadalupe Island, where they are fostered by Laysan albatrosses or hand-reared by the scientists. So far, two male and two female black-footed albatrosses have returned to the island, raising hopes that the birds may eventually breed.
Pedro lvarez Icaza, head of Mexicos National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, said the progress visible on Guadalupe Island fills me with hope.
This collaborative effort between civil society, international support and the Mexican government is a perfect example of what should be done across the country, he said.
The UN General Assembly has declared 20212030 a UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, together with the support of partners, it is designed to prevent, halt, and reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It aims at reviving billions of hectares, covering terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. A global call to action, the UN Decade draws together political support, scientific research, and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration.
